harry wrote:
On Dec 15, 9:50 pm, Tabby wrote:
On Dec 15, 9:31 pm, "john lewis" wrote:

Talking to a man the other day who had spent years and years
working for british gas, but is now working elsewhere.

Do people here generally agree with what he told me?

That new boilers cost about 900 and a new main circuit board costs
about 600 so its worth getting the 'call out' type insurance, to
cover it, if it goes wrong. Of which he thinks Eion and Southern
Electric are the best to get. (he doesn't work for either of them).

I wouldnt remotely agree. If you buy insurance, even if you're lucky
enough to get an insurer that does what they should, you're then
paying average maintenance costs plus advertising costs plus employee
costs plus profit margin and all sorts of other issues that simply
don't apply when you pay for your own maintenance. Mug's game.

NT

Exactly so. I never buy insurance except for house and car.
It's like a roulette wheel. Taken over a period, the insurance will
always win financially. That's why they're there. Not for your
benefit. Most things that arise, I can fix myself anyway. But even
if you can't fix anything it's not worth insurance. Statistics gets
you in the end.

The trouble with Tabby's premise and your's is that it's not always obvious
what's gone wrong, even to trained engineers. Mate of mine has a
Worcester-Bosch boiler and pays (IIRC) about 12-quid per month for a
maintenance contract on it (they also throw in an annual service with the
price).

Under your system, boiler goes faulty, you have to take the time and effort
to do the fault-finding, find a spare part, either wait for it to be
delivered or go for it and then install it, all while SWMBO is giving you
greif because it's cold - and then you may find out that it wasn't that
particular part after all 'cos the replacement didn't fix the problem.

My mate's £12/month get him an annual service, all call-out charges, all
parts and all labour, within 24 hours of reporting the fault. Last year he
was very unlucky and had a spate of problems; first the spark generator went
then a couple of months later the gas valve was replaced. About 3 or 4
months later the PCB had to be replaced. All covered for just £12/month -
well worth it IMHO.